Has anyone changed their chess style as a result of ICS

I Have.

I have noticed that I can no longer play my "normal" style of chess successfully.

Before ICS I always played overly complicated positions well and could generally support dodgy sacrifices. My speed of calculation was very quick.
I tended not to play well in positional games.

After ICS(well half of it). I am so busy evaluating PEMs blockades etc, I no longer have the speed or depth of thought in tactical exchanges. When I try ro complicate I always make an unsouind sacrifice ( & generally lose - especially agains "chess?"). When I play positional games I am better than I previously was.

Summary I have gained on position but lost on tactics (& my grading has gone down rapidly in fast chess and a little in slow)!!
My "style" has changed but not intentionally. Anyone else had similar unexpected effects?

I did'nt notice, in fact for me i would say it has conforted my style.
Well if i can call this style...

For my part i always have been reluctant to learn openings you know, it's not a question of memorization, since i have an excellent memory, but i'm not satisfied at playing things i don't understand even if they are terrific and efficient.

Was the same in school, i never applied a therorem or formula i was not truly understand, of course others were applying it with success and have better rating, but with the time, i had better rating than them afterall, when it has maturated.

Thus for chess it is the same, i try to understand things out of the ICS course, but i do not apply all the principles they recommand to the letter. I pick in the course what interests me, and helps me to progress in the areas i was always bad in.

I'll explain a bit. I'm not knowing openings lines, even if, with the number of games, i reproduce the theoretical moves more and more, as i'm beginning to understand the reasons behind.

On the other hand, on endgames, i'm not so bad, i'm still doing mistakes, sometimes blunders, but since i practice a lot (finish all my games) it's ok, and i manage to calculate better with less pieces.

But the middlegame was (and still is) something i was not knowing what to do. I sometimes do not know AT ALL what piece to move and where to put it.
So i was pushing wood, sometime agressively, and other times too much passively, leading to very volatile results.

ICS brought me the material to fill these holes in my play, telling me when i have to defend, when it is opportune to attack, which kind of center do i should try to reach, etc...
But i think my style hasn't changed because of ICS, i think on the contrary that ICS is bringing some order in the chaos of immature ideas and guesses i developped before at playing on my own.

What has changed with ICS, is maybe the confidence on my play. Before when i was foresee a good move, i was wondering myself, "should i play this now", now i trust more about this. Or before i was throwing my pieces in the tactical blow, with random result, now i prepare my backlines before engaging, etc...

Of course there are still a lot of things i'm doing wrong, but it's my own mess. I don't want to change my style, i want to continue playing that messy play that characterize me, but i want it to be more and more efficient.

I think it explains also my slow progress, but there is progress.
For example today i was able to play 17 games in a row without losing (only wins and draws), then i started to loose a few.
If i was always that concentrated my rating would be higher, but it's rare when i'm in such a mood.

The big flaw in my play is calculation, i calculate well what i calculate, and manage to "see" the correctly the future position sometimes deep (not just 1 or 2 moves forward) corresponding to the line i've chosen, but i often, not to say always, forget some possible moves in the calculation, thus the result is flawed.

Another thing is how i deal with my time. 90% of my games, i finish with more (often a lot more) clock than my opponent. I keep thinking on my opponent time, and generally i use my clock only to validate the move i calculated before according to the move of my opponent.
At each new game, i'm saying to myself "OK, this game, you apply the ICS todolist, you check every move, etc..." and 20 moves later, i find myself playing my own style....

The danger of studying positional chess at the expense of tactics is that you will spend a half hour thinking about where a Knight belongs, and then proceed to put it on a beautiful square where it is en prise.

well, I think am following like the following

1. With deep rybka or stockfish, i will play very slow games 30min to 1 hour
2. with human beings every thursday play 10-20 minutes, with several different people at metropolitan chess club
3. in internet playchess.com will play from 10-15-20 minutes games. !!

Previously i was playing 5 min games.. but now I have started playing rated games by applying theory. mmmm.. this is theory now i need to implement practicals.

Thanks HangingKing. You just confirmed we're in the right place!

I fully expect my rating and performance to drop significantly during this course, just as the OP has said. I can accept that. After the training, I will practice the positional understanding aspect until it is pretty much second nature. Then I will go and start doing the tactical puzzles again to get my tactics up to speed again and then hopefully I will finally have a balance of the two and it is then that I expect my rating to climb over and above where I am now.

Blue Devil Knight wrote:The danger of studying positional chess at the expense of tactics is that you will spend a half hour thinking about where a Knight belongs, and then proceed to put it on a beautiful square where it is en prise.

CLASSIC! Quotable quote!

The only difference this course brought me is that i changed my opening from 1. d4 to 1. e4 .

Crazy, after a positional course i play more tactically.